BeingDiabetic.co.nz » Community

A Christmas farewell.

Nic — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 21:04:48 +0000

As most of you will know from my post a couple of weeks ago, BeingDiabetic is going into an indefinite hiatus after today as we roll into 2011.

Aaron and I both wanted to do a bit of a wrap up, so here goes…

Nic

Well, it’s hard to believe that BeingDiabetic has been running now for 2.5 years, although at the same time I look back on the thousands of hours we’ve clocked up in bringing it to you it almost seems surprising that it’s only been that long! (if that makes any sense).

We’ve come a long way since the first posts in July 2008 (see them here). We’ve…

Aaron: Giving the nod

Aaron — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:31:42 +0000

Outside of the Drs and nurses, dieticians and podiatrists and everyone else involved in our healthcare there is a hugely important role played by those people in our lives that might not have formal health training but nevertheless have a role just as important (more in my opinion) than the aforementioned professionals – our friends and families.

That said, since this will be one of my last posts on the blog, I wanted to properly take a moment to acknowledge the people in my life, our lives, who make living with Diabetes that much easier, who listen when we need to bitch about it, laugh about it when we do and strategise when it comes to that too!

My partner…

Another great piece of D art.

Nic — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:24:34 +0000

Thanks very much to Nickie who sent me this picture last week. I’ve copied in her message below. Well done Blake for educating all the people at school!

the kids and (I supervised the hot glue gun) made this up for our ‘home school’ project fair. Some mums even had serious tears in their eyes. They said they understand Blake has to have needles etc – but when it was displayed this way it brought it home to them what he (and us) have to go thru. This apparantly provoked alot of childrens’ discussions about Blake on the way home in parent’s cars from this project fair.

A very cool D shot from one of our own.

Nic — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:45:35 +0000

I was super impressed when I saw this piece of art constructed by one of the BeingDiabetic community members, Tania.

Awesome!

4, 200 km for diabetes!

Nic — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:30:37 +0000

Thanks to Grace McKnight for sending me an email about this challenge. Grace is a T1 (since age 13) and her Dad, Colin and his friend David have decided to bike all the way across Australia (from Perth to Sydney), all the while raising money for Diabetes New Zealand. They started on Thursday.

In their words:

This madness of cycling from Freemantle (Perth) to Sydney in summer was David’s idea but it did not take any arm bending to get on my bike for this. Depending on the winds it should take us between 28 to 34 days, so maybe an average of 120 to 140 km a day. We will carry most of what we need with top ups…

What do you do with your sharps?

Nic — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 05:41:11 +0000

Hi all – I had a request to post this, so here goes:

Hey guys,
My name is Oriana Hill, a registered nurse and I work at Diabetes Auckland. I am currently looking at the issue of how easy or not it is to get rid of your sharps. I do not have diabetes myself, I did however have gestational diabetes a few years ago, and I was put onto insulin and remember taking my sharps back to the clinic. I know that although there is a needle exchange programme running in Auckland, that people with diabetes are unable to access this.
Just wanting to hear your stories: sharps and the effects not having a service

…

Aaron: My favourite diabetic resources.

Aaron — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:11:23 +0000

Now that I’m out of NZ, I’ve been going through somewhat of a shift in my appreciation of the ease with which I used to be able to get healthcare, support, medication and diabetes paraphernalia. The effect has been though I’ve started using a whole new set of tools which I didn’t pay that much attention to in New Zealand or didn’t have occasion to appreciate as much as I do now.

Some of these Nic and I have talked about heaps but some of them might be new:

Log for Life

Everything that you want to know about this is in this post by Nic and at the Log For Life website. Now that have an…

Guest blog: a citizen of the world.

Nic — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:40:06 +0000

Some of you will have read some of Gathoni’s story from a comment she made on a previous post. Her story was just so incredible I contacted her and asked if she’d be keen to do a guest post. She has written this amazing account, below. Gathoni – so much of what you say sounds so familiar. I love the way you write and I can feel the emotions you were feeling coming through in your prose. You are an amazing woman and your story is going to really resonate with this diabetes community. If you ever fancy a trip to NZ please get in touch – I’ll be there to pick you up at the airport!

My name is…

A tricky dilemma!

Nic — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:06:55 +0000

Hi everyone

I got this email from a T1 reader last week (names have been blanked to protect the innocent).

#%^&*’s Mum is a nightmare with filling my two year old son up with massive amounts of sugar e.g. yesterday she gave him 2 lollipops, 2 choc biscuits, jelly, mashmallows, choc milk and pancakes with syrup in the space of 2 hours! This is despite many times asking her not to. New strategy: phoned her and said he was at an increased risk of getting T1 diabetes and huge amounts of sugar was putting pressure on his pancreas (I realise this is a stretch). Seemed to work. What are your thoughts on this strategy? I am not entirely sure if

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Way to go TV3!!

Nic — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:55:04 +0000

As some of you will know, I work for TVNZ, so me praising TV3 publicly (and linking to their Ondemand service, he he) are two events which don’t happen every day.

However, the “WAY TO GO TV3!!” is very well deserved in this case. I had lunch with a friend today who was telling me she’d seen a piece on Campbell Live about diabetes last week where they interviewed three type 1s.

I tracked down the video here and as a type 1 it is just soooooo refreshing to watch. The points are made loud and clear – us getting diabetes was unavoidable, not due to lifestyle factors or us eating too…